Bring The Hate!

My earliest memories out at grandma and grandpa’s ranch are quite pleasant. With miles and miles of country around us, and long, lazy summer breaks, enabling us to spend weeks with two elderly loved ones who were intent on spoiling us through-and-through, all was good. Dad’s dad (or “Gran,” as we called him) was quite a character. You could spot him a clear mile away, wearing that same pen-striped blue-and-white factory work shirt and those dark-blue uniform pants with an always-oversized cowboy hat atop his head on that anorexically skinny body. He had about 15 pairs of the same uniform hanging in his closet, and I never saw him wear anything else a single day in his life. But hey, grandparents need not be stylish! That ought to be a written law somewhere!

Gran had an incredible level of charisma. He could be charming with an amazing sense of humor. We always thought he’d have been great as a stand-up comic. Gran was “the life of the party,” as they say, and a fundamentally good man. But good a man as he was, he had a problem—he loved his booze! Daily, he sat out on the front porch, on that same rusty, white lawn chair with the paint still chipping off it and became inebriated. This would bring out the demons from his painful past.

He would wake up in the morning and his words would be so clear, so well spoken. But as the day would progress, he would lose himself in his great escape of Schlitz beer. Then the demons would take control: “Them damn Japs. They need to be strangled with a god-damn guitar string, all of them!” Gran was in the Navy during World War II and was on one of the ships hit by the Japanese while escorting the USS Hornet. He couldn’t talk about it while sober, but in varying levels of buzz-ed-ness, he let out that he had seen his friends blown to bits. Those images stayed with him forever. His injured, severely hunched-over back, still containing bits of exploded boilers and random shards of metal from the ship, was a testament to the hell he had lived through. He survived over a day out in shark-infested waters until he was rescued. The guilt he felt for being a survivor was crushing. He had quite a few stories to tell.

And we kids never quit hearing those colorfully endowed, flaming stories over and over again! So after carrying on a great while about how worthy the Japanese were of being strangled, stabbed, and machine-gunned to death, he would go to one of those dusty shelves just above his garage icebox and show us the same picture he had shown us a thousand times before. The picture was of a dead Japanese soldier lying facedown next to a creek. “The only good Jap is a dead Jap!” he would declare. Then, he would continue the tirade with enough loudly yelled curse words to send an eleven-year-old me and my younger brother and cousins into fits of rolling laughter and incited thoughts of bloody vengeance against “our great enemies,” the Japanese.

Grandma would sometimes have to come out on the porch and settle him down because he would get so worked up and belligerent that he would lose himself and lash out at us. It only happened a few times, but we dared not defend the Japanese or say that the war was over (believe me, I learned the hard way!) In times like these, grandma would have to send us away to play while she quieted him: “Ssssssssshhhh! They’re just little kids! You ain’t supposed to cuss too much around little kids. Don’t yell at them! You are gonna ruin them.” Neither grandma nor grandpa was educated, and both grew up fighting extreme poverty. They didn’t have the opportunities we had, and yet they lived through hard times and survived to keep the line going.

Today, Gran is no longer around—hasn’t been for over a decade. I was close to him, and the things brought to light thus far were said to make a point, and not to cast aspersions on my grandfather or put stink on his memory. It pains me to share some of these things, but there is good and bad in all of us, and important lessons should be learned from the good and the bad in the legacies we leave behind. I’m sure a sober Gran would agree.

So let us suppose, of all the things I could glean and carry on of my grandfather’s ways, that I chose to embrace the bitter hatred he had for the Japanese. Suppose I were to carry on the anger and resentment generated from malicious memories of the past. Would that be right? Certainly that would be a big mistake. But what if my culture’s beloved holy book told me to hold people accountable for the sins of their fathers, because of wrongdoings of bygone times? Would that be right?

One of the most head-shaking evils of the Bible is that it is a book that has for so long taught and encouraged hatred and malice. Its yellowed pages have encouraged centuries of violence. And while the Old Testament is much more openly vile and less evolved than the New Testament, both sets of oracles have reddened the ground of every country in the world. The Bible teaches that God hates sinners unto the third and fourth generations…

“…for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me;” (Exodus 20:5)

When I read these words, I can’t help but wonder how many have been stoned, stabbed, or burned alive for age-old wrongs that one’s ancestors were only guilty of. How many innocent voices have hollered out for mercy, squealing to be delivered from slaughter because of a father’s crimes? How many times have the words “no” and “please” been used in the same exclamatory sentences as one pleads for his or her life to be spared? It is chilling to think about.

And it is important to remember that the God of the Old Testament never made distinctions between “the consequences of sin” verses “the guilt of sin” like modern apologists do in trying to justify biblical massacres. The eternal hate and livid rage that flowed out from the thrown of the gods was unearthly in its intensity. The rage that the gods felt when sinned against could last anywhere from a single light punishment of one person (Genesis 49:4) all the way to eternal torture of a soul (Luke 16:19-31). So as it wasn’t to many of the other gods, generational guilt was no big thing to the God of the Bible either…

“the LORD hath sworn that the LORD will have war with Amalek from generation to generation.” (Exodus 17:16)

“17. Remember what Amalek did unto thee by the way, when ye were come forth out of Egypt; 18. How he met thee by the way, and smote the hindmost of thee, even all that were feeble behind thee, when thou wast faint and weary; and he feared not God. 19. Therefore it shall be, when the LORD thy God hath given thee rest from all thine enemies round about, in the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee for an inheritance to possess it, that thou shalt blot out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven; thou shalt not forget it.” (Deuteronomy 24:17-19)

It is manifestly unjust – in principle and in practice – to hold someone accountable for the crimes committed by another. But the gods don’t think so (at least, not very often). If you were an Amalekite, there was no such thing as mercy from God for you. In similar fashion, the paganized Christian concept of vicarious atonement in the form of a savior dying for our sins is as unjust as is generational hatred. It is only horse sense that the word “justice” cannot apply to an innocent party bearing the guilt and punishment of a guilty party. And in at least one place, even the Bible says so…

“The soul that sinneth, it shall die. The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father, neither shall the father bear the iniquity of the son: the righteousness of the righteous shall be upon him, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon him.” (Ezekiel 18:20)

We are each responsible for our own wrongs committed—so much for the idea of a savior dying for my sins! We have here one of the few just and right moral principles in the Bible, but we cannot praise this precept because it is common sense and only creates a hopeless contradiction between the other verses mentioned.

The entire idea of original sin is also an injustice of universal proportion. I cannot be “born sinful,” bearing the guilt of Adam and Eve’s transgressions, and yet so many Christians have no problem assigning us our portion in the lake of fire because of this very crooked-but-accepted line of thinking. All Christians who accept this doctrine should be checked for sanity, or else admit from the outset that they are patently irrational and led by a lord-loving lunacy. But even those who reject the doctrine of depravity are themselves unable to justify barbaric Yahweh’s condemnation and slaughter of Amalek and all other Bible atrocities.

The all-too-human tendency of mankind to hate his fellow man over petty differences is the central danger, but religion is still a detriment. Hatred is the invading germ and religion is the host to carry it unchecked into the mind of the human being. It is the bringing over of bitterness from the past that causes so much bloodshed, and religion is often the vessel for how this hatred is justified and brought in. No one ever hated his fellow man so much as when God told him to. Nothing is more historically vindicated than this fact: those who love God most are out to love men least!

And just as with dear old Gran, I can forgive Christians for past wrongs and overlook the negative things that their belief systems have caused and instead judge them to be good people in spite of the shortcomings of their faith. But this only shows us that the ability to love and forgive, and the ability to refrain from judging a man because of what his ancestors did, is an evolved trait, a thing found in morally superior people and societies, and not biblically observant ones. Worshippers of the gods have always made up the status quo, and their members hold the chief percentage of rioters and lawbreakers of every type. A crimson earth is a territorial mark of the devoutly religious. Look long enough and you’ll find the blood; it is sung about in their hymns, talked about in their preaching, consumed in their communion services, and spilt onto the ground in preservation of their dogmas.

If ever we are to evolve as a society and become better, less hateful, less judgmental people, we must continue to grow away from our vile religious heritages. There have been improvements in religion as there have been in secular thinking. So yes, mankind is getting better (however slowly). But if both the secular and religious worlds are becoming kinder and more civilized and learning not to retain the barbaric and hatemongering ways of tribal war gods like Yahweh, then that means that the gods have had nothing to do with our improved senses of compassion and accountability—not one iota! We should look to ourselves for change and for the betterment of mankind, not to the gods.

(JH)

Tony Alamo: Christian Fundamentalism, Tarentino-style

Tony Alamo's compound in Fouke, Arkansas got raided by law enforcement officials over the weekend, the culmination of a two year investigation of allegations of child abuse, child pornography and polygamy in the compound.

Six girls were placed in state custody, as they were "in harm's way or in imminent danger", according to Arkansas Department of Human Services spokeswoman Julie Munsell.

As despicable a prospect as that development is (presup-Calvinists, insert dubious reactions to atheist making moral judgments here!), what's really astonishing is reading about the illustrious career of this evangelist, founder and head of Tony Alamo Christian Ministries. It reads like a screenplay for a Tarentino movie, one he turned down.

Alamo is a "Damascus Road" Christian, apparently eschewing evidential approaches to theism in favor of more direct revelation. Before his conversion, he was quite the mover and shaker:

I went from being a big band crooner to being an executive in the health club business. I was the executive vice-president of the world’s largest health club chain. We had seventy-five health clubs in the United States, several in Canada, and several in the United Kingdom. I ducked in and out of the motion picture and music industry through the years, cutting my own records to fit whatever the current trend of music was. I put together “Oldie but Goodie” albums, bought radio and television time, and made a fortune out of the albums. I managed the careers of top motion picture stars and recording artists. I also took unknowns and developed them into stars in the movies, in television, and in the recording industry.

Later, when I became popular at this, I was asked by the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Doors, Buffalo Springfield, P.J. Proby, Pete Best, the original drummer with the Beatles, and many other solo singers and groups if I would manage them. Later, after I was saved, I was asked to engineer Eddie Fisher, Lena Horn, Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme back into popularity, not to mention hundreds of others.

Jimmy Bowen, from Warner Brothers Studios in Burbank, asked Billy Strange, one of Frank Sinatra’s music arrangers and the head of the Frank and Nancy Sinatra Publishing Company, if I would do the promotions for Jim Ed Brown, Helen Cornelius, and an entire host of other country/western singers produced by Billy Strange. But I’m no longer available for such things. I’m a pastor, an evangelist and a scribe in the full-time gospel field. However, I do record gospel music.

Clearly, Alamo was destined for greatness, one way or another. But God had other plans for him than managing the Beatles, the Doors, or the Rolling Stones:

I was driving around town in a chauffeur-driven limousine with a police escort and an entourage of seventeen people, putting the world on a trip. I had a barber, a bodyguard, a nurse, and all sorts of “yes” men. If I went to a hot dog stand or a motion picture premiere, I went with the limousines, chauffeurs, cops, and the whole regalia. The bodyguard would open the door, throw down a big velvet pillow; we would step into the velvet pillow. The barber would comb our hair, the nurse take our pulse. One of the fellows would spray us with cologne, another strew flowers in our path, and the cops would stand at attention. Where did I get the cops, the chauffeurs and the limousines? I rented them from a funeral parlor for a hundred bucks a day.

I had spent so much money on promotional ads and on keeping the entourage of seventeen people that my expenses were running into thousands of dollars a day, and I needed money. My attorney told me some of the superstars had invested money in a holding firm and they were interested in investing money in my campaign. Would I meet with them and their attorneys? At first I said, “No. I have a hit record, the record distributors owe me money. Within thirty to forty-five days I will have all the money I need.” My attorney said, “Tony, the way you spend money, there is no way you can survive thirty to forty-five days.” I ranted and raved. “Sure they will put up the dough. I have the star made. I’ve done all the work. Why wouldn’t they take the frosted cake for a million bucks?” “Well, Tony,” he reasoned, “don’t sell half of him.” I agreed to see them and offer five percent for fifty thousand. Little did I know what was waiting for me that day.

The black limousines lined up, the police escort went into formation, and we cruised down the streets with motorists and pedestrians gaping, wondering who the dignitaries were. We cruised over to the attorney’s office. The police lined up the limousines, the chauffeurs opened the doors, and we got out of the limos and went up one flight of stairs to the attorney’s offices in Beverly Hills. The offices were packed. The motion picture stars were there, their attorneys and, of course, my seventeen people.

The attorney representing the investment firm was a little Jewish man. He came forward rubbing his hands and smiling. “Tony Alamo,” he said, “I have been wanting to meet you. This is the greatest promotion I have ever seen in all my years in the industry. It is an extravaganza,” he exclaimed, sweeping the wall with a gesture, and I saw he had the whole promotion laid out on his wall, still rubbing his hands and smiling as we sat down. “Now,” he said, “I understand you boys need money.” I was getting ready to haggle with him, and I thought to myself, “I have one up on him. He thinks I am Italian, and I know he is Jewish.” I answered him with, “Well, I don’t need as much money as you had originally offered.”

Suddenly my ears went completely deaf. I could not hear any noise from the crowd in the room. We were only one floor up, yet I could not hear any noise from the street. I looked at the people in the room. Some of their mouths were moving, but I could not hear anything they were saying. Suddenly I heard a voice, a voice that came from every direction. It was all around me. It was going through every fiber of my being. My head, my arms, my legs; it was all around me. The voice said, “I AM THE LORD THY GOD. STAND UP ON YOUR FEET AND TELL THE PEOPLE IN THIS ROOM THAT JESUS CHRIST IS COMING BACK TO EARTH, OR THOU SHALT SURELY DIE.”

I looked around the room to see if someone was putting me on some kind of a trip, and they were all looking at me. I felt as if I were sealed into some sort of gigantic vacuum. I thought, “I am going crazy. I’m losing my mind. Yes, that’s it, I’m cracking up.” People had told me I was a genius, and geniuses often cracked up, so that was it. So I would get out of here before I made a fool of myself.

I stood to my feet and said, “I am ill.” The giant pressure that was upon me forced me back into my seat, and the voice as many waters flooded all around and through me again. “I AM THE LORD THY GOD. STAND UP ON YOUR FEET AND TELL THE PEOPLE IN THIS ROOM THAT JESUS CHRIST IS COMING BACK TO EARTH AGAIN, OR THOU SHALT SURELY DIE.”

I struggled to my feet again and took one step. As I did, God started playing with my soul like a yo-yo. He would pull it half out of me, and then put it back. My heart was palpitating so hard it felt as if it was going to jump out of my body, and suddenly a revelation came to me, so real I was astounded that I had not always known it. I knew there was a Heaven and a Hell. I started screaming to the top of my lungs, “No, God, no! Please don’t kill me… I’ll tell them! I’ll tell them! I’ll tell them!” The breath went back into my body, and my heart stopped jumping.

I said, “God, You don’t know these people like I do. They won’t believe me. But I’ll tell them. I’ll call them all on the phone, send them telegrams, anything. But please don’t make me do it here, they will think I’m crazy.” Again He started pulling the soul out of me. My heart was jumping out of my body. I was gasping for breath. “No, God, no…please,” I began screaming, “I’ll do it, I’ll do it. I’ll tell them.” Again my breath went back in my body, my heart stopped thumping.

Interestingly, Alamo was aware of the incredible nature of the experience, even as it was happening:

I looked at the people in the room. They were all staring at me with eyes as big as owls. “I know you won’t believe me,” I said, “but God is telling me to tell you that Jesus Christ is coming back to earth.” Now, I said to myself, I said it. Oops, again my soul started going in and out, again, gasping for breath. “What’s the matter, God? I said it, I told them.” Suddenly every promotion I had ever done in my life was laid out before me in block form. The enthusiasm I had built and sold a star or a product with. And the Lord said, “NOW THAT YOU KNOW I AM HERE, IS THAT THE BEST YOU CAN DO FOR ME?” “I know you won’t believe me, but Jesus Christ is coming back to earth again.” This time when I looked at the group of people, they all looked so small to me, and I really wound up with all enthusiasm. “Repent,” I screamed. “Jesus is coming!” I had never read a Bible scripture in my life. I had seen the picture, “Elmer Gantry,” and I commanded everyone in the room to get down on their knees and repent immediately, that Jesus was coming. I thought that if I did not do a good job, they would all disintegrate before my eyes and I would disintegrate for not doing a good enough job.

Alamo went to priest with news of his theophany. The priest told him to "keep it in [his] heart" and be baptized, a reaction that infuriated Alamo, and began a long career of anti-Catholicism. After that, he "went from one church to another, but found no one preaching the powerful message that God had given to me."

Thus began the illustrious career of Tony Alamo, Christian evangelist.

As you might expect, the next step was buying a home in Malibu, and setting up shop manufacturing ornate, beaded and custom painted jackets for the Hollywood stars. And of course, all the proceeds from that enterprise is bound to eventually cause trouble for the humble preacher; in 1994 he was sentenced to six years in prison for tax evasion.

Back in 1982, Tony's wife Susan Alamo had died of cancer. Inspired by a vision that had revealed his wife as resurrected, Alamo declared to the community that she would in fact be resurrected, and kept Susan's body, embalmed, on display in the community compound for the better part of a year in anticipation of the miracle. The body was finally turned over to Susan's family as part of a three year legal battle, ending with Alamo using the body's turnover as part of an arrangement for surrender to authorities on tax evasion and other charges.

Of course when your wife dies of cancer and doesn't get resurrected as you planned, after many months of waiting, the only thing to do is remarry, and quickly. A beautiful Swedish woman would do the trick. Good things never seem to last when you're Tony Alamo, however, and two years ylater, she would be gone, divorcing him with the complaint that Alamo wanted her to have plastic surgery so as to resemble his dead, beloved Susan. Oh, that and the regular beatings and druggings he gave her.

But an evangelist must press on, and run the race, and in 1998, after serving four years of his six year tax evasion sentence, he started to rebuild the languishing Tony Alamo Christian Ministries. Before long, Alamo's message could be heard on radio stations all over America, and as far away as Sri Lanka.

Satan, offended by a resurgent Tony Alamo, hit back hard, either stirring up damnable lies about Alamo, or tripping Tony into temptation. Reports had started to accumulate that the evangelist's compound had become a den of pornography and abuse, possibly including pre-pubescent children. In an interview given after the raid, Alamo denied the charges:

"They (government agents) have got six of our girls in custody. Little girls. They probably disrobed them. I mean it's the most filthy bunch of devils that I've ever heard of," Alamo said.

As for former followers making the allegations, Alamo said, "I've kicked a lot of people out of the church and they'll say anything to get back at me."

He suggested efforts to gather evidence against him will only bring more people to his ministry, noting that daily traffic on his Web site has grown more than 10-fold, to more than 1 million hits, since the raid.

"They're really making us famous," he said with a laugh.

Satan's plan having backfired -- again! -- Alamo was more defiant than defensive about the charges of pornography and abuse, suggesting he had a mandate from the Bible for the, um, "young marriages":

"In the Bible it happened. But girls today, I don't marry 'em if they want to at 14-15 years old. Because we won't do it, even though I believe it's OK," Alamo said.

In an AP interview on Saturday, he had said that for girls having sex, "consent is puberty."

On Monday he bristled at descriptions of his organization as a cult, saying enemies want to cast him as a "weirdo for preaching what the Bible says."

Enemies abound when you are Tony Alamo.

Debunking Creationism Sister Blog Started!

If you'll look on the navigation sidebar you'll see several sister Blogs have just been created by us. A couple of posts have already been made to Debunking Creationism by Touchstone. We're looking for people who have an expertise in these areas who would like to contribute to these Blogs.

Handicapping of Skepticism (part 2)

Human beings have an innate tendency to search for patterns and simple explanations in order to make sense of the world. Such a practice results in an incorporation of elements that fit into an understandable answer and a neglect of elements that do not.

Psychologists often use this phenomenon to explain the reason people believe in clairvoyance, horoscopes, prayer, and other such foolishness. In a sense, we remember when these methods “work” and forget when they do not. With respect to religion, people will often remember “answered” prayers but forget or rationalize the unanswered ones. Have you ever noticed how people will trumpet abundances of miracles when there are a few survivors of an accident or natural disaster yet say nothing about the many people who died? It’s the same principle. Dawkins alludes to this:

[Pope John Paul II’s] polytheistic hankerings were dramatically demonstrated in 1981 when he suffered an assassination attempt in Rome, and attributed his survival to intervention by Our Lady of Fatima: “A maternal hand guided the bullet.” One cannot help wondering why she didn’t guide it to miss him altogether. Others might think the team of surgeons who operated on him for six hours deserved at least a share of the credit; but perhaps their hands, too, were maternally guided.

It is very easy to claim that prayer healed a person dying of a terrible disease, but quite another to prove it. Study after study demonstrates that prayer has no effect on patients when they are unaware that they are being prayed for. On the other hand, when subjects do realize that they are being prayed for, two results tend to reoccur:

1) Patients typically improve from holistic methods, such as laying of hands, meditation, compassionate care, etc. This is nothing new. Medical researchers have well established that the mind can work wonders and inexplicably heal the body. The problem with crediting God for the healing, other than the fact that it only works in concert with the patient’s knowledge of being prayed for, is that the results appear across the religious and irreligious spectrum.

2) Patients sometimes take a turn for the worst due to what some believe is a form of performance anxiety. They may stress over the need to get better in order to not let the people who are praying for them down. Perhaps they might also start dwelling on the severity of their conditions because the physicians are using drastic, unorthodoxed measures like prayer to assist them. People use prayer as their way of appealing to God and use God’s will as an explanation for why certain things happen. Since we can easily discredit the idea of prayer serving as a simple pattern for the complex natural events of the world, its usefulness should be self-evidently ridiculous.

[Source: STEP from American Heart Journal April 2006, MANTRA from Lancet volume 366, and the 2001 Mayo Clinic coronary care unit trial are perhaps the three most definitive investigations on the topic.]

Suppose we really wanted to test the power of prayer and see to it that no confounding variables from the temporal realm would be present. To begin the study, we gather a group of fifty atheists and a group of fifty Christians who volunteer to have an extremely lethal dose of bacteria injected intravenously. Following the injection, we provide the fifty atheists with a regimen of broad-spectrum antibiotics to counteract the infection. We then isolate the atheists in a secret location and tell no one that they are involved in the experiment. Essentially, they do not exist to the rest of the world. Likewise, we isolate the Christians in a secret location but refuse them the antibiotic regimen. News of the fifty Christians injected with the lethal bacteria will then be broadcast over the entire Christian world. The report will ask everyone to pray to God for their facilitated recovery from the infection so that deductive reasoning will force the world to acknowledge the one true religion because of the unquestionable and verifiable power of God and prayer. Because no one knows about the atheists in isolation, no one is specifically praying for them. All they have are antibiotics, while the Christians have the power of prayer from hundreds of millions of certain volunteers and the omnipotence of God. After two months, we will end the experiment and see which group has the most survivors.

Whether or not Christians are willing to admit it, I think everyone knows which group would fare better in this study. No semi-rational Christian would ever sign up for this deadly experiment even with the added promise of a great monetary compensation for the survivors. They know that God isn’t really going to answer the divinely directed requests of hundreds of millions of Christians because God only seems to answer prayers in some mystical and unobservable fashion. Deep down, these Christians may even realize that they cannot consider prayer dependable. Some Christians reading the results of this hypothetical experiment would simply appeal to authorities who assert that there have been studies demonstrating just the opposite. Other Christians would manufacture reasons such as “God doesn’t like being tested” or “People didn’t have enough faith.” They will avoid the rational conclusion that prayers are only “answered” by placebo effect. They will avoid admitting that tragic events or unbelievable coincidences are the result of complex natural factors. They will avoid admitting that prayers have answers just as often as problems have solutions.

One of the Earliest Witnesses

Apologist writers and speakers like William Lane Craig, NT Wright and Richard Bauckham attempt to make the argument that the evidence of Jesus' resurrection was overwhelming to the apostles and that multiple eyewitnesses to the events of the resurrection were the core set of believers whose stories were transferred to the Greek gospel writers. Yet this fails to explain the data we have within just the New Testament itself. One man, Saul of Tarsus, was most definitely not convinced of the resurrection by the evidence that was available to him in Palestine shortly after the events took place.

Richard Carrier, refuting a similar argument from JP Holding, puts it best when he writes the following:

Why would he have persecuted them so vehemently if the evidence for the Resurrection was already as extraordinarily good as Holding's argument requires? Why does Paul only believe after he himself sees a vision of the Christ telling him he is wrong? Why does Paul never mention any other reason for converting? Even in Acts, he never cites any evidence as having convinced him, except his own personal vision (besides the scriptures, of course). He never makes any references to checking the facts of the empty tomb story, or being persuaded by the testimony of other witnesses--not even in Galatians. In fact, in Galatians Paul goes out of his way to deny having done any such thing until, at best, many years after he was already converted. So why did it take a personal visit from God to convince Paul? We cannot say he was loony or stupid--from his letters we can see Paul clearly was neither. There can be no plausible explanation for his not believing the Christians except the fact that he had no reason to believe them. Which entails there was no evidence that could be checked at all, or what could be checked was inconclusive to any reasonable man like Paul.

So contra Craig, Wright and Bauckham, we have multiple people who lived in Palestine around the time of the supposed resurrection and empty tomb, some of whom were referred to as Christians, who simply were not convinced by the evidence for the resurrection. The largest group who weren't convinced were the Jews, who simply saw no reason to believe this supposedly miraculous event took place even though they could also interview anyone involved. Paul was a member of this group before his vision on the road to Damascus and he was definitely not convinced by the evidence.

Therefore, the evidence wasn't convincing enough for Paul, who was alive and able to interview the supposed Christian eyewitnesses whose stories supposedly later became the Greek gospels. The only evidence that convinced Paul was a vision. If Paul had not had the vision, he would have continued to remain unconvinced, meaning there simply was not adequate physical or testimonial support for the belief in the resurrection prior to the time Paul had his vision.

This is a large problem for arguments such as William Lane Craig makes with his claims that the resurrection is the best explanation for the historical facts presented by the Greek gospels. Craig puts it this way in "The Historicity of the Empty Tomb":

Therefore, the Christian community also, of which Peter was the leader, must have believed in the empty tomb. But that can only mean that the tomb was empty. For not only would the disciples not believe in a resurrection if the corpse were still in the grave, but they could never have proclaimed the resurrection either under such circumstances. But if the tomb was empty, then it is unthinkable that Paul, being in the city for two weeks six years later and after that often in contact with the Christian community there, should never hear a thing about the empty tomb. Indeed, is it too much to imagine that during his two week stay Paul would want to visit the place where the Lord lay? Ordinary human feelings would suggest such a thing. So I think that it is highly probable that Paul not only accepted the empty tomb, but that he also knew that the actual grave of Jesus was empty.

However all Craig really has here is speculation and he fails to address the primary question of Paul's rejection of the evidence prior to his conversion. In addition, he simply glosses over the existence of the Ebionite community who considered themselves Christians yet rejected the bodily resurrection. For of course all of the chances to investigate the claims of Christianity were just as available to the Ebionites, Jews and Paul prior to his conversion. Furthermore, prior to that time Paul would have been approaching those claims with the doubts of a skeptic, rather than the beliefs of someone who had the fervor of a new convert.

To phrase the argument briefly then I would say this:

1. Prior to Paul's conversion, any evidence for the resurrection was just as strong as it was after his conversion.

2. The evidence for the resurrection failed to convince Paul of the truth of Christianity.

3. Therefore, the evidence for the resurrection alone, without specific interventions by God to make someone believe, must be inadequate to convince a skeptic who has not had a vision from God of its truth.

I Started Two New Debunking Blogs

That's right. We're expanding into new areas: Debunking Creationism, and Debunking the Christian Right. I don't have the needed expertise to deal effectively with these two topics but I think they are needed. I'm looking for two individuals who have expertise in these two areas and would each like to run these two sister blogs. Leave a comment or e-mail me if you're interested.

Was Atheism the Cause of 20th Century Atrocities?

A student of Soviet history and communist ideology with a MA in Russian Studies from Georgetown University answers this question here. Be sure to check out the pictures of the Nazi connection with the church here, and Martin Luther's dirty little book about the Jews.

More Angels Than Atheists, According to Baylor Study

Today's Washington Times reports on a study performed by researchers at Baylor who found that half of all Americans believe they are protected by guardian angels, and a "significant majority" are comfortable with the supernatural. Also, the study pegs the number of atheists in America at 4% of populace, a number they say is unchanged since 1944.


I don't doubt the answers reported on belief in angels; if anything, I'd say the numbers were higher, based on my own admittedly theist-heavy experience. The results are the responses gathered on 350 questions for 1,648 individuals. Here's a short synopsis of the findings on supernaturalism in the group:

The survey, which has a margin of error of four percentage points, also revealed that theological liberals are more apt to believe in the paranormal and the occult - haunted houses, UFOs, communicating with the dead and astrology - than do conservatives. Women (35 percent), blacks (41 percent), those younger than 30 (40 percent), Democrats (40 percent) and singles who are cohabitating (49 percent) were more likely to believe, the survey said.

What caught my eye here, however, was the editorial provided by Rodney Stark, the researcher, who is an.... well, I guess an "iconoclast" would be a charitable way to put it (see here, here and here, for why I say that).

From the news article (and remember, this is the Washington Times):

Baylor researchers also criticized a much-ballyhooed “new atheism” as a barely discernable trend, saying the number of Americans who are atheists has stayed at 4 percent since 1944.

Why? Atheism is a “godless revolution that never happened,” the survey said, adding that irreligion often is not effectively transmitted to children who, when they reach adulthood, often join conservative religious denominations.

Heh. There is an old adage in Christian circles: God has no grandchildren. That's a nod to the observation that while kids can be indoctrinated by their parents, they eventually grow up to think for themselves (to some extent), and real faith commitments must be made anew by each person. Faith isn't really an heritable trait, in other words, as much a cultural tradition.

But here, we have a corollary from Stark: Dawkins has no grandchildren, either. What's striking about this article is all the interesting things they don't say. Don't Christian families have trouble replicating faithful kids? What about the "jumping ship" phenomenon in the homeschool world, as identified by authors like Michael Pearl? And... Barna? I'd expect a Baylor theist and sociologist of religion to be quite familiar with the God has no grandchildren dynamic, but apparently attrition only goes one way, in his view.

Perhaps this can be resolved by understanding this in terms of Christian culture. Where kids grow up to be basically uncommitted, the dominance of Christian culture exerts a kind of social gravity that attracts them, appealing in its comfortable (if waning) cultural hegemony. They don't so much embrace the dogma as much as the find a comfortable place to float along in the main of the cultural stream. It also occurs to me that the rigors and demands of atheism are a kind of selection filter itself, which anticipates just such attrition.

Later in the article:

Moreover, atheism is hardly taking over the world. Europe does have more atheists than the U.S., the survey said, but no country has more than 7 percent except France, which is at 14 percent of the populace. Farther to the east, Japan is at 12 percent and China is at 14 percent.

Mr. Stark dismissed the popularity of several recent books on atheism, saying they are mostly the products of “angry” people who are largely ignored by theists.

“The religious people don't care about the irreligious people,” Mr. Stark said, “but the irreligious are prickly. I think they're just angry.”

This is a curious mix of commentary. Setting aside the op/ed prose from the article's author (Julia Duin), this is a strange analysis of the situation for an academic, and a sociologist, no less. Stark explains the popularity of recent books on atheism as the product of... anger. That's an odd hypothesis, given the number of angry books out there -- especially from theist authors -- that no one pays any attention to. It's stranger still as a response when we read that Stark doesn't buy it himself, announcing in the next sentence that religious people don't care about irreligious people. Just to make sure we understand that Stark is confused, and not just telling us that this apathy is not attached to atheist anger in selling books, he connects them, finishing the sentence with his observation that the "irreligious are prickly", "angry".

So, the large religious majority in America can't be bothered by the irreligious, because (at least) they are angry. But yet a raft of "angry" atheist books have soared on the best seller charts, in a country in which (according to Stark) only 4% of the people identify themselves as atheists. That's not an explanation from Stark, but an unwitting? emphasis of the problematic nature of his findings and conclusions.

And that is the underlying problem, here. I've not read the study in question yet, but how naïve is it to ask your subjects if the are atheists, or if they have no belief in any God or gods, and accept the answers back at face value? Do we suppose that we might go around the room, even with "confidential questionnaires" and ask our subjects if they are homosexual and expect to get an accurate set of answers back? It's fine to report back that 4% of respondents are comfortable identifying themselves as atheists -- which doesn't strike me as an implausible number -- but it's not even a crude gauge to the underlying reality, and Stark has the clue pointing him to the problem right in the article, with the question about the popularity of books from the likes of Dawkins, Dennett and Harris.

For every self-identified atheist, in public or in a poll, stands an atheist who just isn't comfortable owning up to that in this culture. Ask your favorite, friendly self-identified atheist and they will tell you there's at least one they know (and often several) who remain "in the closet" for any of many social and emotional reasons. In my own case, the fact of my reasoning towards atheism produced several days of terror, with the urge to hide it, deny it, hedge against it, just out of fear for the social costs it may exact. In a society where atheists, for all the popularity of Dawkins' book, atheists are still commonly demonized in a similar fashion to the way homosexuals are, and for much the same reasons.

Behind the silent atheist(s) stands a small gang of agnostics, folks who do not identify themselves as atheists, but who nonetheless either have no belief in God but aren't certain enough to take on the "atheist" label, or are actually on the fence, unconvinced either way.

In this article on the same release, Stark blames the media for the popularity of the New Atheist books:

Despite the wave of best sellers by atheists blasting religion and predictions that religious belief is fading, Stark said the survey shows atheism has not gained momentum. Nonbelievers still represent only about 4 percent of Americans, Stark said, but they attract interest because they are a novelty and because "there's a lot of support and sympathy for them in the media."

Here, we have Stark conspicuously omitting agnostics. Above, he pegs "atheists" at 4% of the population. Here, he describes this 4% as "non-believers", with the implication being that the complementary 96% representing "believers".

There's a much more efficient answer than either of Stark's odd explanations. While the number of self-identified atheists may not be growing (and for the record, I'm calling "bull" on that finding, too, but am willing to accept it, arguendo, for the purposes of this post), the growth in "non-believers" has been dramatic in America in recent years. A look at Barna's work over those same years dovetails nicely with the New York Times Bestseller List, sporting so many atheistic and irreligious books selling in such large numbers. Non-belief, skepticism and scientific thinking are growth industries.

Given the traditional demonization of atheism in the culture, something not even given passing acknowledgment in the articles I linked to (caveat: this may be addressed in the analysis of the study which I've not yet read), this is what we would expect to see in evolution of an skeptical, rationalist culture. The doubt and skepticism precede the atheistic self-identification, and the dissolution or dissipation of the social animus takes time, a trailing indicator following early indicators like the surge in books sales on the topic, and the broad decline of participation and enthusiasm observed in churches across the land.


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Ray Boltz, Popular Christian Music Artist, Comes Out

This recent article in The Washington Blade is causing a lot of anguish among my Christian friends. Christians coming out of the closet as gay really gets under the skin of many evangelicals (I had one Christian friend tell me that as bad as my atheism was, at least I wasn't gay), but Boltz's story is particularly difficult, because of his popularity as an artist, and character Boltz shows in making the decisions he's made, to finally be honest about himself and his life.

I was never much for Christian music. I spent most of fifth and sixth grade listening to Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon, over and over, and I think that is a bit of inoculation for what has been contemporary Christian music in the last 30 years. But Ray Boltz is a familiar name, and several of his songs are instantly familiar to me. Recently, Ray has disclosed that he is a gay man, has divorced his wife, and moved to Florida to start on a new path, a fresh start. The article provides some interesting background on Boltz's thirty year struggle with his homosexuality, and how he managed to build a successful marriage to a woman he loved and raised his kids while dealing with the inner conflict of his disposition.

This is agonizing for many of the Christians I talked to. He's so well known, and not just famous (in evangelical circles), but his songs were "so true, so filled with the spirit, so heart felt" to quote a Christian friend's recent lament. After thirty years of being a Christian, and very visible, inspiring leader in the Christian community, how does a man so immersed in the Gospel, the culture of the Gospel, in an otherwise healthy and happy family situation just decide to go off the reservation? This is not a case, so far as we can tell, of a Christian coming forward and confessing his struggles with sin, his battle against temptation. Rather, he decided that being homosexual wasn't just something he did, which is the typical view in evangelicaldom (see the frequent comparisons evangelicals frequently supply to show they understand the homosexual struggle against temptation: the lure of gambling, alcohol, gossip, even sweets are commonly trotted out as badges of solidarity with those struggling with their homosexuality), but something he was.


As is evident in Boltz's current situation, post-coming-out, one can make large theological adjustments, gerrymandering around what seem to be strong prohibitions in the Bible and still live as a Christian, albeit a non-traditional one. But here I think we see the playing out of seismic pressures where Christianity and living experience grind together. It's difficult to read Paul in Romans 1 and miss the invective:

24Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. 25They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen. 26Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. 27In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion. 28Furthermore, since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, he gave them over to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done. 29They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, 30slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; 31they are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless. 32Although they know God's righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.

This isn't hemming and hawing about the historical accuracies about genealogical timelines in the mists of Genesis. This is Paul laying it on heavy in moral and soteriological terms. On a face value reading of the text, Boltz has aligned himself with the absolute worst all creatures in God's eyes -- full of every kind of evil. I don't know how Boltz harmonizes passages like that with his current beliefs, or even if he tries. But this passage and others in the Bible do not seem to grant much leeway on this topic. I've heard the arguments for Paul being "read of context" here, with the suggestion profferred that Paul was only speaking about the homosexuality practiced in local pagan rituals of the time, and not of homosexuality in general. That's quite a stretch, and if that kind of adjustment holds, there's little in the Bible propositionally can survive the intent application of such "adjusting" hermeneutics.

Rationalizations borne of necessity aside, Boltz's revelation has been deeply discomforting for Christians I've talked to in the past few days. One of the realizations that is finally sinking in in evangelical circles is the waning of traditional hostility toward homosexuality of previous generations in the culture. Homosexuals are still widely detested and shamed, thanks in large part to evangelical Christians, but the stigma is not what it was, even recently, especially among young people. Ray Boltz just changing course and charting a new path toward life as an actively gay man just highlights how compelling the the homosexual as counterfactual to Paul and the Bible has become. I don't know Boltz personally, but I think one would be hard pressed to reconcile the stream of evils Paul tells us characterize those who "do what ought not be done". Of course the claim will be made that homosexual practices are themselves desperately wicked, but the Biblical view suggest something much stronger and pervasive obtains for the homosexual. Pretty much you turn into the worst kind of human being in every way, to hear Paul tell it.

“If you were to hold up the rule book and go, ‘Here are all the rules Christians must live by,’ did I follow every one of those rules all that time? Not at all, you know, because I kind of rejected a lot of things, but I’ve grown some even since then. I guess I felt that the church, that they had it wrong about how I felt with being gay all these years, so maybe they had it wrong about a lot of other things.”

- Ray Boltz

According to the article, Boltz has a friendly, supportive relationship with his ex-wife (they have since divorced) and his kids (who were grown and out of the house by the time this came about). Boltz has made enough money to provide for his family, and while there must have been a lot of pain and anguish in the way all this played out, Boltz and his family have emerged on as positive a note as one might hope. Carol Boltz now is active in a gay advocacy group called Soulforce.

Maybe the process Paul is describing in Romans 1 just hasn't played out yet, and it will take some time for Ray Boltz to embrace the various kinds of wickedness Paul enumerates for the unrepentant homosexual. But as Boltz proceeds with this new chapter in his life as a gay man, as his "Boltz-ness" remains, and the qualities and virtues he demonstrated in his life over the past 30 years continue, he's yet another point of dissonance for the Biblical Christian. This isn't how it's supposed to be, the gay man who's decent and kind, responsible, talented, giving. If Paul was the inspired "hand of God" they suppose he is, what do we do with Ray Boltz?

A Review of John F. Haught's book, God and the New Atheism Part 1

I think Christian theologians debunk themselves. When I read Arminian and Calvinist arguments I agree with them both when they criticize each other, as I do with Catholic versus Protestant arguments, and liberalism versus fundamentalist arguments. When debunking Christianity as an outsider, I merely have to state why I agree with their criticisms of each other. They do my work for me, for the most part. And they know that which they argue against very well, too.

In my book I utilize the arguments of liberal Christian scholars against evangelical Christianity over and over. They make my case for me. Evangelical (or fundamentalist) Christianity does not have a leg to stand on after the liberals are done with it.

But what about liberal Christianity?

Liberal Catholic scholar John F. Haught, former Chair and Professor in the Department of Theology at Georgetown University from 1970-2005, and one of the world’s leading thinkers in the area of science and religion, thinks his version of faith survives the onslaught of the so-called “New Atheists.” In a book titled, God and the New Atheism, Haught takes aim at Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens. Against Dawkins he claims that God cannot be dismissed as a delusion; against Harris he claims that faith is not the enemy of reason; and against Hitchens he claims that religion does not poison everything.

In the Introduction Haught argues that a proper understanding of God, faith, and theology is something these critics are woefully lacking in, and as such their critique of Christian religion is “theological unchallenging.” (p. xi). Haught argues that when it comes to the Christian notion of God the understanding of the New Atheists “has almost nothing to do with what Christian faith and theology today understand by that name.” (p. xv). When it comes to understanding religious faith their views are “at the same unscholarly level as the unreflective, superstitious, and literalist religiosity of those they criticize.” (p. xiii). Haught faults them for debating with “extremists” like creationists, fundamentalists, terrorists and intelligent design advocates “rather than any major theologians.” (p. xv).

In Haught’s words the New Atheists (including Daniel Dennett at this point) think “science alone can tell us what religion is really about, and it can provide better answers than theology to every important question people ask.” (p. x).

In a few posts I’m going to look more closely at Dr. Haught’s arguments.

Religion As A Logic Puzzle

Here is a logic puzzle. You are walking down a road to a town. You come to a fork in the road. Standing there are two men. You already know that one of them always lies and one of them always tells the truth. What one question can you ask one of them that will give you the information you need to choose the right road?

The answer is "which road would he tell me to take?" and when you find out, you go the other way. Now lets add three more liars for a total of four liars and one truthful. At this point, it becomes unsolvable. How can you determine who is telling the truth and who is not?

Now Imagine we replace the town with Heaven, and replace the men with a Hindu, a Buddhist, a Jew, a Christian and a Muslim and add a road for each. How can you determine who is telling the truth and who is not? All you can do is just pick a direction and go. That doesn't seem like something that was set up by the supreme intellect in the universe. That strategy violates the principle of minimizing as much uncertainty as possible to increase the likelihood of a successful outcome. That is a strategy that wasn't thought out very well.

Is Religion the Root of All Evil, and if so, Does Science Offer the Alternative?

The Secular Philosophy Blog is doing a weekly Root of All Evil series of blogs on this question and has invited a number of thinkers to address it, including me. Here is Michael Shermer's contribution. The contribution of Christian de Duve, the 1977 Nobel Prize winner in physiology and medicine can be found here. Others will appear on a weekly basis.

The Sarah Palin Predicament for Evangelicals

David P. Gushee, Distinguished University Professor of Christian Ethics at Mercer University in Atlanta, wrote an opinion piece for USA Today (Sept. 15, 2008) about the status of women leaders among evangelicals and Palin's potential as the vice-President and later as President of America. Her most rigorous supporters are evangelicals, but Gushee asks whether they have thought through their own theology when supporting her? He asks the following questions. Evangelical, want to give them a go?:

• Is it now your view that God can call a woman to serve as president of the United States? Are you prepared to renounce publicly any further claim that God's plan is for men rather than women to exercise leadership in society, the workplace and public life? Do you acknowledge having become full-fledged egalitarians in this sphere at least?

• Would Palin be acceptable as vice president because she would still be under the ultimate authority of McCain as president, like the structure of authority that occurs in some of your churches? Have you fully come to grips with the fact that if after his election McCain were to die, Palin would be in authority over every male in the USA as president?

• If you agree that God can call a woman to serve as president, does this have any implications for your views on women's leadership in church life? Would you be willing to vote for a qualified woman to serve as pastor of your church? If not, why not?

• Do you believe that Palin is under the authority of her husband as head of the family? If so, would this authority spill over into her role as vice president?

• Do you believe that women carry primary responsibility for the care of children in the home? If so, does this affect your support for Palin? If not, are you willing to change your position and instead argue for flexibility in the distribution of child care responsibilities according to the needs of the family?

Manipulating Facts and Denying the Truth: A Look at Christian Dogma

Once the God (or Gods (if your sect is Trinitarian)) speak via the written word (the Bible), divine truth is set for time and eternity. Since God is viewed as absolute truth, he and his “truth” are forever frozen in time and, as we have seen again and again here at DC, the God is so dogmatically connected to the ancient Near Eastern view of time an space, to admit change is to give God basically a theological death sentence.

Just as the Judaisms circled their wagons to apologetically defend their theology against the new Christian heresy with the Talmud, so to the original defense of Christianity was not against the non-believing secular word, but against believers be they fellow Christians (Heretics) or other God fearing people labeled “pagan” (a derogatory term used to belittle other God fearers just as African American were commonly called Niggers).

Since God acts and can only live via theological interpretations outside the Bible, to interpret an event in the wrong way can damage or even destroy faith. However, Christians have circled their wagons and issued dogmatic statements of faith called creeds drawn form selective readings of the Bible. This positive safe guard ensures that only positive or faith building interpretations are fed to the faithful laity it keeping all believers on the Yellow Brick Road to Oz (Heaven).

This can readily be seen in your local Mormon missionaries who are forbidden by their State Mission President not to read any book or view any video that is not officially approved by the LDS Church itself. All Mormons missionaries are familiar with the teaching that all non Mormons “lie in wait to deceive” (I attended the locale Ward here in Greenville for 20 years, though I never joined).

Likewise, the Southern Baptist purged all their colleges and universities of “liberal” professors when the conservatives took over the Convention in the late 80’s. Luckily, schools like Furman University saw the proverbial “hand writing on the wall” and left the control of the Convention for academic freedom. Once all dissenting professors were removed from questioning worked out Biblical dogmatics, the new Biblical patriarchs elites turned inward and terminate all women professors; not based on academic ability, but on St. Paul’s bias theology of Genesis that only men are created in God’s image and the woman was tricked by the talking serpent who later mislead the man. Thus, Biblical theology demands that gullible women be removed from areas were they may mislead men, especially those preparing to serve St. Paul’s God.

As a one time student at Bob Jones University I found it very ironic that while the University was anti Communist, they maintained their rigorous fundamentalism in exactly the same way dictators control the minds of their people (one thinks here of the policies of North Korea‘s Kim Jong ll). The rules dictated which radio stations students could listen to (I received 50 demerits for listen to Loretta Lynn sing a Gospel song on the local country station WESC), which church you could attend (a number of protestant churches are always off limits meaning a student could be expelled or a faculty or staff could be fired for attending).

Since the doctrine of Original Sin was pushed to its extreme, all students had to register for a one hour Discipline Committee per week each semester where all were students were required to weekly check a computer printout to see if his or her name had been list by one unknowingly being turned in by another student (doing God’s will). In other words, Original Sin for BJU meant you were considered guilty until your could prove yourself innocent.

Hatred for the secular world was only exceeded by the Universities hatred for other Christian denominations which the late Bob Jones Jr. considered “sold out wholesale to compromise and apostasy”. As such, the only man to exceed the deception of the Pope in Rome was Billy Graham. The last time Billy Graham had a crusade in Greenville, the University made it plain that any student who attended any of the services would be expelled. In fact, Bob Jones Jr. told the student body at chapel (I was there) that “Billy Graham has done more damage to Christianity than any man who has ever lived”. As such, all incoming Freshman had to attend a week long orientation fueled with anti Graham rhetoric.

As seen in the notice at the top of this post, all reading material was highly censored. The head of the Church History department told his un-graduate and graduate students that there never has been a truthful church history ever written. To lock this in, tenure for any professor at Bob Jones University a yearly signing a of a dogmatic creedal statement which demands adherence to the fundamental of the truths of the faith as listed in the university's creedal confession was required.

As Ed Babinski has often pointed out (now so in the Foreword to John’s newest book), all Christian sects including those running colleges believing the Bible as absolute truth, that is, believing a God breath verbally inspirited Bible as a fundamental bases for all faith and life only mellow with age. So be it Harvard or Bob Jones University, truth can only be denied for so long by manipulating the facts even if that be considered God‘s Word the Bible.

As sure as liberalism is a creeping indicator of reality; that truth demands attention, so to must all preachers and schools sooner or latter must face the fact that the only thing keeping God alive is yesterday’s faith deemed worth fighting for. It is in this sense that faith and hope are poor substitutes for truth, plus this new puppet labled "truth" must now dance to the tune church dogmatics. However, even when faith is renamed truth, objectivity can only continue to be denied in the trust that a positive interpretation can be maintained. Moreover, the circle of faith as sown to the masses is proof that circular reasoning has its place in the absolute truth of God and the Bible.

End the final analysis, just as the Jesus movements formed sects of emergent Christianity only to create dogmatic creedal institutions called churches which over time liberalized in the face of future facts, so too do new groups spring off from the stagnating formal churches to form new sects who, at least for a time are on fire for the truth and Jesus. But just as the old maxim states that “An apple does not fall far from the tree” so also these sect end up becoming the very thing that they despised in the first place. But then reality and objective truth can be denied for only so long!

I'll Be Speaking for the CFI of Indiana

Plan on coming out if you can this Saturday or Sunday. I'd like to meet my readers.

Click on the image to blow it up.

I'll be speaking about my book, Why I Became an Atheist. If you're part of a freethinking group and want a good speaker I know of one *ahem*. ;-) If you're part of a Christian group and want to see a good debate, ask me!

September 11, 2001

This is the date seven years ago that Sam Harris started writing his book, The End of Faith. At least something good came from that horrible and despicable cowardly act of terrorism.

William Lane Craig Talks About Me

Christian radio host Justin Brierley does an awesome job interviewing people for his UK based weekly radio show. He interviewed me some time ago. Lately he's interviewed Norman Geisler, Alvin Plantinga, Gary Habermas, and William Lane Craig, who spoke about me in his July 19th interview to be found here (just scroll down).

Justin picks up the topic leading up to me at about the 1 hour and 13 minute marker.

In speaking about those of us who share our deconversion stories, Craig thinks our "reverse testimonies" are "very powerful," and they make him wonder if he himself is deluded! From now on if people question the power of a deconversion story, let's quote Craig!

Craig goes on to say that if you look at these testimonies closely we didn't leave for intellectual reasons. Instead we left for emotional reasons "having to do with a negative experience" of some sort. To "make it look credible" he says, "they [we] will emphasize the intellectual aspects of it."

In this context Justin mentions my name and Dr. Craig said "exactly," as if I am a typical case of what he just talked about. Craig says: "The merit of John Loftus's testimony is that he's candid about his adultery and pornography and the way he felt burned and abandoned by the local church when he fell into sin; that it was really these things which prompted him to leave the faith, not the intellectual problems."

Craig does admit the same things can be said for Christians who "came to Christ for personal or emotional reasons," however, "it's more credible if you present yourself as having gone through a long intellectual search." Then speaking to Christians he says, "you gotta be really careful about these things because sometimes they're not always the whole truth."

Craig confesses that he himself did not go through a long intellectual search, and he doesn't tell people that he did, because "it's just not true." "That wasn't my experience," he says, "and I want to be candid about that."

Craig himself grounds his faith in a supposed veridical experience with the Holy Spirit, not intellectual reasons anyway.

You can listen to it yourself.

In any case, let me comment. In my book I am honest and candid that I had some negative experiences which shook my faith and goaded me into searching for the truth. Where Craig comes up with "pornography" as a factor, I haven't a clue. I shared my experiences because, as Craig says of himself, it wasn't due entirely to a long intellectual search, and so like him, "it's just not true" of me to say that it was. Like him, "that wasn't my experience," on the other side, either.

But neither was my change of mind due entirely because of my experiences. Part of my story includes the challenges of harmonizing science with the Genesis creation accounts. Part of my story includes the problem of evil. Part of my story includes the lack of communication (or illumination) of the Holy Spirit in the lives of church people I associated with. In other words, yes, I was candid about it all. But it misrepresents the facts to say it was purely negative experiences that led me away from the fold. Why should people like Craig believe what I say about my experiences but reject out of hand what I say about my reasons? I said that I could not reconcile everything I had experienced and everything I had learned with my faith. It was a total blow to my faith and it included both my experiences and my studies.

I remember talking with a woman before I had left the fold who told me she had a terrible experience which caused her to want to reject Christianity (this was years ago and I forgot what kind of negative experience she told me). So she read everything she could get her hands on to find reasons not to believe. In the end, she told me, she just could not change her mind. In the end, she just had to continue believing.

Her story was not my experience if you've read my story. I did not try to leave the fold. I had spent too much time and too much money into my education that I was not going to throw it all away because of a negative experience or two. I'm way too stubborn for that. My whole life was wrapped around being a minister, all of my friends and colleagues were Christians, and I was hoping to teach full time at a Christian college. So even with the negative experiences I had, I was not going to go down without a hard fight, kicking and screaming against the very thought of leaving my faith.

But this woman is an example of the honesty you see in my book. She had to be honest with herself despite the negative experiences. So did I. The way she solved her questions is not the way I solved mine. But I can say we were both honest with ourselves. I would not have left the faith if the reasons were not there, despite my experiences. Period! Say what you will. But if my story has the merit that Craig says it does in being honest with why I left the fold, then do not apply that merit selectively. Apply it across the board to everything I said.

Thanks to someone named Helen for telling me of this interview.

New Blog Template On the Way

Yep, watch for it, perhaps tomorrow. We can't seem to find the bug so it's time for a new look to our Blog.

Technical Difficulties

Our technical staff is working on this problem. ;-)

Dinesh D'Souza, Christopher Hitchens, and Dennis Prager Debate

Link

Gen. 2-3, Normal-form Game Matrix Shows That God Chose The Worst Outcome

When presented with a choice of outcomes the rational decision maker will choose the outcome with a positive payoff, but not God.

- God is Omnipotent
- God made the universe
- God made the world
- God made Adam and Eve.
- God is Omniscient.
- The best way to understand something is to build it.

God must have known the properties and tolerances of everything he created, just like a baker and just like an engineer. Since he is omniscient and has a plan, the events that played out in the Garden Of Eden should have come as no surprise to Him.

DECISION AND GAME THEORY
Decision Theory and Game theory were developed to help make predictions about outcomes and analyze how certain outcomes come about. It is used heavily in economics and evolutionary biology. Using one aspect of them, we can assign relative values to events, organize them in a matrix, iterate through all the possible outcomes and derive a value that is equal to the relative value of the outcome. The outcome with highest value is the "dominant strategy", any outcome lower that that dominant strategy is called a "dominated strategy".

"Stochastic Dominance: If action A has a better payoff than action B under each individual state of nature, then we say that action B is stochastically dominated by action A. If the payoff matrix truly represents every thing the decision maker hopes (or fears) to receive from the decision in question, then no rational decision maker will ever choose to perform action B."
Whalen, Thomas. "Payoff Matrix and Decision Rule", Whalens.org. Date of Internet Publication Unknown. Sponsoring organization unknown. 07 Sep. 2008. [http://www.whalens.org/Sofia/choice/matrix.htm].

OTHER RELATED LINKS
- Wikipedia, Stochastic Dominance
- Answers.com, Stochastic Dominance

IF ADAM HAD GOTTEN SICK AND DIED AFTER EVE HAD GOTTEN PREGNANT, THEY PROBABLY WOULD HAVE LEARNED THEIR LESSON AND ADAMS OFFSPRING WOULD HAVE POPULATED THE WORLD ANYWAY.
Adam and Eve are like a cake. The Baker knows what it takes to make them turn out a certain way. God must have known what it takes to make Adam and Eve turn out a certain way. For example if god had made the fruit smell like week old road kill with maggots living in it, chances are they would not have eaten the fruit or would have gotten sick and died. If they had gotten sick, threw up and one of them died, then that probably would have taught them the lesson God wanted them to learn without any ambiguity, but since the fruit was fashioned in a way that appealed to them, they ate it. In fact god built desire into Eve and therefore into Adam (since Eve was derived from Adam) and since she didn't know the difference between good and evil, she couldn't know that disobeying god was evil. However, she did have the desire and an agent telling her what she desired and liked to hear (1, 2, 3). Liking something is neither right or wrong, good or evil, it just simply is. Separate the "like" from what is right and wrong. Good and Evil, for the most part, are cultural judgments. They underwent some sort of transformation which caused them to realize they were naked, good from evil and introduced sin into themselves and therefore indirectly to the world.

KEY EVENTS IN THE FALL OF MAN RELATIVE TO THIS ARTICLE
- God made the man
- planted the garden
- then made the tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil grow in the garden
- and placed the man in it
- warned the man about the tree
- by telling him he would die using the word die in an ambiguous non-standard way.
in that order.

2:7 Then the LORD God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.

2:8 The LORD God planted a garden toward the east, in Eden; and there He placed the man whom He had formed.

2:9 Out of the ground the LORD God caused to grow every tree that is pleasing to the sight and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

2:15 Then the LORD God took the man and put him into the garden of Eden to cultivate it and keep it.

2:16 The LORD God commanded the man, saying, "From any tree of the garden you may eat freely;

2:17 but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you will surely die."

DERIVING THE NORMAL-FORM GAME / PAYOFF MATRIX
To derive the Normal-form game payoff matrix, we use analytical schemes (AKA "thinking tools") known as a Time-line chart, a weighted ranking matrix, a causal diagram and an event tree. It would take too much time and space to do some of them here, but I have already done some of them in my other articles referenced below. However, since they aren't very complicated, we can do them in our heads for now and create the matrices. We broke the events down and sorted them chronologically. Then we made an event tree, a causal diagram and then assigned values to them in the weighted ranking scale.

In the weighted ranking, it is necessary to place a value on events relative to each other. In other words, an obedient Adam in the garden is more valuable than a disobedient Adam in the garden, so the Obedient Adam gets a higher value. Systematically iterating through the possible combination's yielded the weighted ranking scale shown below.


Now we derive the columns and rows based on the causal flow diagram and the event trees to create our Normal-form game / Payoff Matrix.



In the first row and first column cell, we can see that the combination of "No Adam" ( equivalent to 0 according to our weighted ranking) and the "Tree in" [the garden] (equivalent to 1 according to our weighted ranking) results in a score of 0, 1 for a total value of 1. In the second cell in that row, we get a score of 0, 0 for a total value of zero. The chart below reflects the total value with regard to Adam in each row. As we can see, God clearly chose the worst outcome for Adam in his plan.



The question we are left with after thinking this through is "why?". Some possible reasons are

- that the story is folklore
- that god artificially created a problem so he could solve it as Jesus

I'll explore more of them in my follow on articles.

REFERENCE AND FURTHER READING

Articles supporting Non-Historicity of Adam and Eve
A. Disqualifying Adam And Eve

Articles supporting Internal Inconsistency in the story of the Fall of Man
1. Gen. 2:16-3:24, Adam And Eve Were Mentally Incompetent
2. Gen. 2:7-3:6, God Should Have Known That Adam Would Disobey
3. Gen. 2:7-3:6, Adams Sin Was An Emergent Behavior
4. Gen. 2:6-9, God Ignored Adams Admonishment Option

PRIOR COMMENTS FROM FIRST POST DATE
This post was reformatted and the comments were lost. It was reposted and the comments were included as part of the text.

bahramthered said...
How many times are we going to debate the graden around here?

Lets move onto something new before people start moving onto new blogs.
3:47 PM, September 07, 2008

oliver said...
While I do appreciate the use of Game Theory, we have to realize that Game Theory will only convince those who are Game Theorist (i.e. not people like my mother who will read the Genesis account and then tell me a beautiful story about why it's bad to disobey God.)
4:20 PM, September 07, 2008

charles w. said...
Thanks for another useless post, Lee.
4:25 PM, September 07, 2008

lee randolph said...
No one is forcing you to do anything, and I recommend that you read other blogs to make you a more well rounded person. Are blogs mutually exclusive? If you don't understand the significance of something, just ask.

I'm writing for the fence-sitter and casual believer.
There's no point in preaching to the choir is there?

do me a favor. Write out romans five (so you understand it as well as possible), then cross out all references to adam and tell me what you have left over.

FYI, I have a plan and a strategy for this argument that takes me out to thanksgiving if I do one a week. After that I'll move on to Cain and Abel and keep on until I get to the end of Gen. 11.

So I guess I won't be your favorite blogger.

In my opinion christianity is never going to be debunked until the source is discredited. Fighting a battle on multiple fronts, rarely succeeds. Debating hard to grasp concepts that leave wiggle room for christians, in my view, is not going to do it, especially when some of them don't get that fact that god having a plan and being omniscient negates free will.

Adam is at the root of christianity. As long as there is credibility for adam, there is credibility for christianity.
4:36 PM, September 07, 2008

lee randolph said...
forewarned is forearmed.

Just so you know,
here is my plan for "the fall of man" articles for the coming months. the date in brackets is the estimated publish date, the name of the article follows along with its viewpoint.

[20080914] Blaming the Victim, psychology related

[20080921] God Caused The Problem of Sin so He could Solve it, psychology related

[20080928] Talking Snake, humor, paleontology related

[20081005] God Was Not Omniscient in the Garden, Logic Related

[20081012] Comparing The History Of The Needle, anthropolgy related

[20081019] Comparing The History of Agriculture, anthropology related

[20081026] Sex and Death, You Can't Argue With Success, psychology related

[20081102] Adam and Eve are FOLKLORE, summary of the previous articles

[20081109] Analyzing Romans 5, argument analysis, informal logic related
4:49 PM, September 07, 2008

lee randolph said...
Hi Oliver,
I'm not a game theorist either, but if I get it, so will other people.

I think that you do a dis-service to your grandmother by underestimating her.

people surprise you when you think you know what they're capable of, which weakens your position.

the take home is that we can see by thinking it through, that the outcome was what was intended. Now we have to figure out why.

and besides that, I'm trying to introduce some tools of thinking and demonstrate how to apply them to real life problems.
5:12 PM, September 07, 2008

richard said...
This theory and the post in general is nonsensical to say the least!
6:23 PM, September 07, 2008

lee randolph said...
Hi Richard,
well, you did say the least,
so why is it 'nonsensical'?
6:33 PM, September 07, 2008

stan, the half-truth teller said...
I'm just guessing, but perhaps Richard thinks it nonsensical because he doesn't get it?

Perhaps he doesn't understand how it could be that god's alleged decision to create this world is worse than choosing not to create anything at all.

Perhaps he doesn't realize that because he chose to create (assuming the existence of god for the sake of argument), god is culpable in both the successes and failures of his creations (if he is omnipotent and omniscient).

Perhaps, rather than any of this, he is lazy and a fool.

--
Stan
8:42 PM, September 07, 2008

bahramthered said...
Lee; I like this blog since I've been here I've learned a lot. New arguments and such.

But still on the garden I havn't learned anything in the last two posts and honestly am starting to get bored with it.

I don't know about anyone else but I don't have time to keep coming back to blog that's not exploring something new.

But it's your blog (among others).
8:48 PM, September 07, 2008

lee randolph said...
Hi Bahram,
what topics would like to see explored?
brainstorm a little bit, give me some topics.

maybe i have something in draft that I can finish up post for you. I have lots of scraps of ideas and notes in my googledocs.
12:20 AM, September 08, 2008

tigg13 said...
I say, keep it up Lee!

Providing several arguments from different sides of the question only solidifies your position.

And providing alternate arguments just makes those of us who find ourselves crossing swords with christians better prepared.
1:26 AM, September 08, 2008

lee randolph said...
tiggers are wonderful things!
your check is in the mail.
;-)
6:42 AM, September 08, 2008

bahramthered said...
Tig; last couple of these feel the same, just explained differently. Least to me.

Lee;

So far your adam theory been intresting I just think it's kinda beating a dead horse at this point.

Topics I'd like to explore;

Why the bible is so pro slavery.

God's war with the egyptian gods (I only know a little based on a couple semi factual movies)

Some of the more ridiculous genisis claims (always fun). Mainly what happens after the ark (Like a drunk Noah cursing one of his kids into slavery forever and god backing him on it)

And exactly how god reconciles the claim that witchcraft (the wiccan kind) is evil
7:25 AM, September 08, 2008

lee randolph said...
Hi bahram,
if you want to see what has been written on DC about a topic, you can use the search field in the top left of the screen.

- here is a link to all the articles with a "slavery" label
- I've never heard of gods war with egyptian gods, maybe you could be more specific?
- I plan on doing an article on why the noahs ark is folklore, but you can see what my schedule is so it'll be a while
- do a search for witches in the search field.

another option is that you can research one of these topics on your own and submit an article to us for publishing. If you're interested in that, I'll give you an email address to submit it to.
8:15 AM, September 08, 2008

rich said...
Hi Lee,
I wanted to explore a possibility that the assigned values for Adam in obey and Adam in disobey. If these values are based on a payoff, then what payoff do you base these values on? It seems as though they are placed on Adam obeying and remaining in the garden and disobeying and being kicked out. So if that is the payoff then I would agree with the values. But if the payoff is something further down the road then the garden, maybe it changes things.
First you must realize that I am looking at this from LDS doctrine, which differs a bit from evangelist doctrine with regard to the fall. I did post a link to another blog article in one of your other posts that I hope you had time to read.
LDS say that Adam was in a state of innocence in the garden, didn't know good from evil, they wouldn't have a reference to understand joy and sorrow, maybe some other differences. They would remain in this state until they gained knowledge of good and evil. I also began to argue before that they didn't understand that they were naked, which is a key factor, in having offspring. I would agree that at some point they could figure out how to have kids but then the kids would be in the same innocent state.
In the plan of salvation that I know, our goal is to become like God. We have to have the knowledge of good and evil, be able to make choices and learn through those choices that consequences come of all choices, good or bad. As we make bad choices, we see the negative consequences and make changes. If we make good choices we see good consequences. We gain a working knowledge of good and evil, through the choices we make here. If we succeed in learning to make good choices and correct the mistakes, then we can become perfect, eventually, like God is. So if we are left in the garden in a state of innocence without the knowledge and experience necessary to progress.
You spoke before about your dogs. I also have dogs, and I leave them inside when I am not home. I hate coming home and cleaning piles up. Lots of people told me to use the old newspaper rub their nose in the pile method to train the dogs. I don’t like that because I doubt the dog wants poop on his nose. Instead when I come home and find a pile, I give the dog no attention, completely ignore it, since he likes to play and have my undivided attention, this is not desirable to the dog. When I come home to no pile, I over emphasize my attention and play time with him. It wasn’t very long before I had no stinking piles to clean up when I got home. This is true freedom to the dog, he can roam around the house when I am gone, doesn’t have to be locked in some room, and I can trust that he will want to please.
Now in your dog story, you effectively removed your dogs from the kitchen of Eden, and keep them from entering the kitchen, some might even suggest that you force them out because they have no choice in the matter, so they won’t put their nose on the table of life. I’m not proposing that I am a better dog God than you, but your dogs are restricted in their behavior, being removed from the room, and they have no choice but to chew toys or sleep until you grant them access to the kitchen again. I’m sure you would rather have the dogs free to come and go as they please and choose not to put their nose on the table. Once again, true freedom to the dogs.
God would like the same from us, being able to have every choice available to us and be trusted to always make the right choice. Coming here, removed from his presence, to learn the consequences of our choices is our time to learn from our mistakes, keep our noses off the table and piles off the floor because we choose to.
If this is correct then I would swap the two values because being innocently oblivious to the knowledge of good and evil means we would never be able to become like God, which would be more desirable than existing in a garden forever without experiencing joy.
3:11 PM, September 08, 2008

rich said...
Just a note I thought of, the same trick hasn't worked to keep my dog of the furniture while I'm gone.
3:13 PM, September 08, 2008

lee randolph said...
Hi Rich,
welcome back,
It sounds like you are a better Dog God than I am and a better Dog God than god is.

How does the way you handle your dogs compare to the way god handled adam?

It sounds like your dogs get the extended version of the prisoners dilemma, they get a chance to react to subsequent encounters. Like a training phase or something. Or have I misunderstood?
4:28 PM, September 08, 2008

lee randolph said...
doGs will be doGs won't they? what to do, what to do?
4:45 PM, September 08, 2008

anonymous said...
I think the problem here is that virtually every mainline religion that maintains the Hebrew scriptures regard this story as allegorical? I always thought that the main idea here is that there is that we are imperfect and incapable of perfecting ourselves. I rather like that "lesson".

If you are off arguing with the crazies about a literal reading of the Old Testament, I can think of a billion other ways to spend time productively. On the other hand, if you can read a literary myth for its intrinsic worth, perhaps you'd contribute something useful.
9:37 PM, September 08, 2008

evan said...
Anonymous ... you're simply wrong.

40% of AMERICANS believe the earth is less than 10000 years old.

That means a majority of Christians in the US (about 75-80% of the US population is Christian) believe in the literal story of Genesis.

If you think we ought to argue against a minority position rather than target overtly crazy beliefs that are held by the majority of Christians, you don't understand the purpose of this site.
11:08 PM, September 08, 2008

lee randolph said...
anonymous,
yea, what evan said,
and moreover you didn't read this comment above
"do me a favor. Write out romans five (so you understand it as well as possible), then cross out all references to adam and tell me what you have left over. ....Adam is at the root of christianity. As long as there is credibility for adam, there is credibility for christianity."

if you cross out all references to adam, what you have is an empty assertion that the killing of Jesus had some mystical meaning.

If you've ever worked in security, crowd control, you know that, theoretically, to handle a riot, you have to take out the leaders. That was a tumultuous time in jerusalem, the romans needed to maintain control, and so when jesus showed up with his gang of merry men carrying swords, the authorities caught him and hung him out to dry.

Paul used some pre-existing biases to create this rationalization out of cognitive dissonance that created a nice neat frame put Jesus in for the rest.

does that clear it up for you?

Its not about arguing over myths, its about stopping FRAUD.
11:30 PM, September 08, 2008

richard said...
Bahramhered,

Yes, I agree. To quote Einstein, "Insanity means doing the same thing over and over expecting different results."
12:21 AM, September 09, 2008

lee randolph said...
Richard,
of course you would because you have no rebuttal to my argument so you just attack me personally.

typical christian strategy.
Might makes right. Biblical principle.
12:24 AM, September 09, 2008

richard said...
Ha, ha, do you honestly believe that you can disprove the God of the universe by using a silly game matrix?
12:43 AM, September 09, 2008

lee randolph said...
Hi Richard,
bad move #2,
ridicule.
Got any rebuttals handy?
1:21 AM, September 09, 2008

lee randolph said...
oh and richard,
in case you didn't get the memo,
"disprove" presumes there is something proven. No one has proven any "god of the universe", but feel free to try your hand at it. Maybe you can get him to roust me out of bed in the morning.
3:57 AM, September 09, 2008

lee randolph said...
Triablogue has a response to this article. They really seem to have put a lot of work into it, but in the end its really only nay-saying.
Heres the link to it.
However it is a good example of an argument from ignorance premised by a conclusion drawn from unverifiable sources.
I recommend you go take a look at it and see what I had to say about it.
9:40 AM, September 09, 2008

Prof. Helmut Koester: A Reality Check for Him

Prof. Helmut Koester of Harvard Divinity School attacks The End of Biblical Studies by clinging to religionist arguments for biblical studies.

In the September/October 2008 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review (aka, BAR, pages 11-12), Prof. Helmut Koester, a retired and eminent member of Harvard Divinity School, launched an attack on my recent book, The End of Biblical Studies.

Unfortunately, Prof. Koester’s critique (which is not currently accessible on-line) is short on facts and long on routine religionist apologetics for biblical studies. He begins his critique as follows:

Read more »

UNHOLY MOSES: Conservative Scholars Defuse Triablogue's Bombast

Sometimes amateurs don’t know enough to know they don’t know enough. A luminous example of this phenomenon is offered by Triablogue’s, Postmortem on Avalos, which has assembled a collection of conservative scholars to prove that I was wrong about Sargon.

Read more »